By Roger Alexander
The admission season has started with a bang, literally. Stories of colleges demanding capitation fees up to Rs 2 crore, principals auctioning 'management seats', college clerks demanding bribes, and the UGC granting 'deemed university' status without adequate audit are dominating the front pages of newspapers as the admission season opens.
Education is now a purchasable commodity!
Thanks to the blinkered vision of middle class parents, education is no longer a learning process. Instead, it is now all about “job-oriented” courses. A B.A,, B,Sc, or B,Com degree is “useless” as it does not “equip” youngsters for the “needs of industry”. (Check out the 'Education Supplements' in leading newspapers, magazines and TV shows.)
As a result, while mainstream education has become passé, courses like BMM, BMS, Catering and Hospitality, Computer Training and even Air Hostess training have parents queuing up to pay lakhs to teaching shops affiliated to unknown 'foreign universities' for a seat. Is this what education all about?
If 'counsellors' at many of today's so-called institutions of higher learning are asked what they can expect, students are offered a straightforward answer: “a better job, higher salary, more marketable skills, and more impressive credentials.”
In the new scenario, even the University Grants Commission (UGC) and All India Council for Technical Education Commission (AICTE) say that recognising the desperate need of most college students to land jobs, courses should be utilitarian, vocational, and narrow.
But in the quest to churn out 'graduates' suited for 'industrial needs', the present system is not preparing them for life, challenging them to think beyond the confines of their often parochial and provincial upbringings. (One reason why the Raj Thackerays can sell the 'Marathi Manoos' spiel so easily.)
But what is forgotten is the fact that if you view education in purely instrumental terms as a way to a higher-paying job - if it's merely a mechanism for mass customisation within a marketplace of ephemeral consumer goods - you effectively give a free pass to the prevailing machinery of power and those who run it. The status quo remains unchallenged and unquestioned!
Today's college students are being indoctrinated in the idea that they need to earn “degrees that work”. They're being taught to measure their self-worth by the salary they'll earn after college. They're being urged to be lifelong learners, not because learning is transformative or even enjoyable, but because to “keep current” is to “stay competitive in the global marketplace.” Of course, there's no guarantee that keeping current won't get you a pink slip as so many 'techies' are learning to their dismay.
Indeed, these so-called techies are programmed to believe that technical skills are the key to success as well as life itself, and those who find themselves on the wrong side of the digital divide are doomed to lives of misery.
Parents and students are recruited or retained with authoritative-looking data: job placement rates, average starting salaries of graduates, and even alumni satisfaction rates through glossy ads and government pronouncements. They are led to believe that these courses are a panacea to solve the problem of unemployment.
The new courses, therefore, are smart courses, not smart teachers interacting with curious students. Canned lessons are offered with PowerPoint efficiency, and students are programmed to respond robotically to “questions” posed to what are supposed to be inquisitive minds. Now it all about “credits, projects and presentations”. Check out the syllabi of the new-age institutions and you'll know what I mean.
Now that this mindset is official policy, the old-fashioned idea that education is about moulding character, forming a moral and ethical identity, or even becoming a more self-aware person has been flushed down the toilet.
After all, how can you quantify such elusive traits as assessable goals, or showcase such non-measurements in the glossy marketing brochures, glowing press releases, and gushing TV ads that compete to entice prospective students and their anxiety-ridden parents to hand over ever larger sums of money to ensure a lucrative future?
As long as we continue to treat students as customers and education as a commodity, our hopes for truly substantive changes in our country's direction are likely to be dashed. As long as education is driven by industry imperatives and the tyranny of the practical, our students will fail to acknowledge that the goal of education is to know yourself - and so your own limits and those of your country as well.
To know how to get by or get ahead is one thing, but to know yourself is to struggle to recognise your own limitations as well as illusions. Indeed, education should help us to see ourselves and our world in fresh, even disturbing, ways.
As parents we must know that if we want a better future for our children and grandchildren, we must resist accepting the world as it's being packaged and sold to us by those who lead us to believe that education is nothing but a potential passport to material success.
Roger And Out
Showing posts with label Roger Alexander. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Roger Alexander. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Friday, June 5, 2009
The Grim Picture Of Obama's Middle East
By Noam Chomsky
A CNN headline, reporting Obama's plans for his June 4 Cairo address, reads 'Obama looks to reach the soul of the Muslim world.' Perhaps that captures his intent, but more significant is the content hidden in the rhetorical stance, or more accurately, omitted.
Keeping just to Israel-Palestine -- there was nothing substantive about anything else -- Obama called on Arabs and Israelis not to 'point fingers' at each other or to 'see this conflict only from one side or the other.'
There is, however, a third side, that of the United States, which has played a decisive role in sustaining the current conflict. Obama gave no indication that its role should change or even be considered.
Those familiar with the history will rationally conclude, then, that Obama will continue in the path of unilateral US rejectionism.
Obama once again praised the Arab Peace Initiative, saying only that Arabs should see it as 'an important beginning, but not the end of their responsibilities.' How should the Obama administration see it?
Obama and his advisers are surely aware that the Initiative reiterates the long-standing international consensus calling for a two-state settlement on the international (pre-June '67) border, perhaps with 'minor and mutual modifications,' to borrow US government usage before it departed sharply from world opinion in the 1970s, vetoing a Security Council resolution backed by the Arab 'confrontation states' (Egypt, Iran, Syria), and tacitly by the PLO, with the same essential content as the Arab Peace Initiative except that the latter goes beyond by calling on Arab states to normalize relations with Israel in the context of this political settlement.
Obama has called on the Arab states to proceed with normalization, studiously ignoring, however, the crucial political settlement that is its precondition. The Initiative cannot be a 'beginning' if the US continues to refuse to accept its core principles, even to acknowledge them.
In the background is the Obama administration's goal, enunciated most clearly by Senator John Kerry, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to forge an alliance of Israel and the 'moderate' Arab states against Iran. The term 'moderate' has nothing to do with the character of the state, but rather signals its willingness to conform to US demands.
What is Israel to do in return for Arab steps to normalize relations? The strongest position so far enunciated by the Obama administration is that Israel should conform to Phase I of the 2003 Road Map, which states: 'Israel freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements).' All sides claim to accept the Road Map, overlooking the fact that Israel instantly added 14 reservations that render it inoperable.
Overlooked in the debate over settlements is that even if Israel were to accept Phase I of the Road Map, that would leave in place the entire settlement project that has already been developed, with decisive US support, to ensure that Israel will take over the valuable land within the illegal 'separation wall' (including the primary water supplies of the region) as well as the Jordan Valley, thus imprisoning what is left, which is being broken up into cantons by settlement/infrastructure salients extending far to the East.
Unmentioned as well is that Israel is taking over Greater Jerusalem, the site of its major current development programs, displacing many Arabs, so that what remains to Palestinians will be separated from the center of their cultural, economic, and sociopolitical life.
Also unmentioned is that all of this is in violation of international law, as conceded by the government of Israel after the 1967 conquest, and reaffirmed by Security Council resolutions and the International Court of Justice. Also unmentioned are Israel's successful operations since 1991 to separate the West Bank from Gaza, since turned into a prison where survival is barely possible, further undermining the hopes for a viable Palestinian state.
It is worth remembering that there has been one break in US-Israeli rejectionism. President Clinton recognized that the terms he had offered at the failed 2000 Camp David meetings were not acceptable to any Palestinians, and in December, proposed his 'parameters,' vague but more forthcoming.
He then announced that both sides had accepted the parameters, though both had reservations. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met in Taba, Egypt to iron out the differences, and made considerable progress.
A full resolution could have been reached in a few more days, they announced in their final joint press conference.
But Israel called off the negotiations prematurely, and they have not been formally resumed. The single exception indicates that if an American president is willing to tolerate a meaningful diplomatic settlement, it can very likely be reached.
It is also worth remembering that the Bush I administration went a bit beyond words in objecting to illegal Israeli settlement projects, namely, by withholding US economic support for them.
In contrast, Obama administration officials stated that such measures are 'not under discussion' and that any pressures on Israel to conform to the Road Map will be 'largely symbolic,' so the New York Times reported (Helene Cooper, June 1).
There is more to say, but it does not relieve the grim picture that Obama has been painting, with a few extra touches in his widely-heralded address to the Muslim World in Cairo on June 4.
,
A CNN headline, reporting Obama's plans for his June 4 Cairo address, reads 'Obama looks to reach the soul of the Muslim world.' Perhaps that captures his intent, but more significant is the content hidden in the rhetorical stance, or more accurately, omitted.
Keeping just to Israel-Palestine -- there was nothing substantive about anything else -- Obama called on Arabs and Israelis not to 'point fingers' at each other or to 'see this conflict only from one side or the other.'
There is, however, a third side, that of the United States, which has played a decisive role in sustaining the current conflict. Obama gave no indication that its role should change or even be considered.
Those familiar with the history will rationally conclude, then, that Obama will continue in the path of unilateral US rejectionism.
Obama once again praised the Arab Peace Initiative, saying only that Arabs should see it as 'an important beginning, but not the end of their responsibilities.' How should the Obama administration see it?
Obama and his advisers are surely aware that the Initiative reiterates the long-standing international consensus calling for a two-state settlement on the international (pre-June '67) border, perhaps with 'minor and mutual modifications,' to borrow US government usage before it departed sharply from world opinion in the 1970s, vetoing a Security Council resolution backed by the Arab 'confrontation states' (Egypt, Iran, Syria), and tacitly by the PLO, with the same essential content as the Arab Peace Initiative except that the latter goes beyond by calling on Arab states to normalize relations with Israel in the context of this political settlement.
Obama has called on the Arab states to proceed with normalization, studiously ignoring, however, the crucial political settlement that is its precondition. The Initiative cannot be a 'beginning' if the US continues to refuse to accept its core principles, even to acknowledge them.
In the background is the Obama administration's goal, enunciated most clearly by Senator John Kerry, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to forge an alliance of Israel and the 'moderate' Arab states against Iran. The term 'moderate' has nothing to do with the character of the state, but rather signals its willingness to conform to US demands.
What is Israel to do in return for Arab steps to normalize relations? The strongest position so far enunciated by the Obama administration is that Israel should conform to Phase I of the 2003 Road Map, which states: 'Israel freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements).' All sides claim to accept the Road Map, overlooking the fact that Israel instantly added 14 reservations that render it inoperable.
Overlooked in the debate over settlements is that even if Israel were to accept Phase I of the Road Map, that would leave in place the entire settlement project that has already been developed, with decisive US support, to ensure that Israel will take over the valuable land within the illegal 'separation wall' (including the primary water supplies of the region) as well as the Jordan Valley, thus imprisoning what is left, which is being broken up into cantons by settlement/infrastructure salients extending far to the East.
Unmentioned as well is that Israel is taking over Greater Jerusalem, the site of its major current development programs, displacing many Arabs, so that what remains to Palestinians will be separated from the center of their cultural, economic, and sociopolitical life.
Also unmentioned is that all of this is in violation of international law, as conceded by the government of Israel after the 1967 conquest, and reaffirmed by Security Council resolutions and the International Court of Justice. Also unmentioned are Israel's successful operations since 1991 to separate the West Bank from Gaza, since turned into a prison where survival is barely possible, further undermining the hopes for a viable Palestinian state.
It is worth remembering that there has been one break in US-Israeli rejectionism. President Clinton recognized that the terms he had offered at the failed 2000 Camp David meetings were not acceptable to any Palestinians, and in December, proposed his 'parameters,' vague but more forthcoming.
He then announced that both sides had accepted the parameters, though both had reservations. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met in Taba, Egypt to iron out the differences, and made considerable progress.
A full resolution could have been reached in a few more days, they announced in their final joint press conference.
But Israel called off the negotiations prematurely, and they have not been formally resumed. The single exception indicates that if an American president is willing to tolerate a meaningful diplomatic settlement, it can very likely be reached.
It is also worth remembering that the Bush I administration went a bit beyond words in objecting to illegal Israeli settlement projects, namely, by withholding US economic support for them.
In contrast, Obama administration officials stated that such measures are 'not under discussion' and that any pressures on Israel to conform to the Road Map will be 'largely symbolic,' so the New York Times reported (Helene Cooper, June 1).
There is more to say, but it does not relieve the grim picture that Obama has been painting, with a few extra touches in his widely-heralded address to the Muslim World in Cairo on June 4.
,
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Attacks On Students Reveal Deeper Malaise
The recent assaults on Indian students are an expression of the deepening social crisis in Australia
Indian students have long complained of police not taking their complaints of racist attacks seriously. Reports have emerged of officers refusing to formally lodge reports of criminal incidents; one student was told to simply move to another suburb to avoid further trouble.
Surprisingly, a few days ago deputy police commissioner Kieran Walshe’s absurdly claimed that there was no evidence that recent assaults and robberies were racially motivated.
In reality, the political establishment has nothing but contempt for the well-being of ordinary students, whether they are from India, Australia, or anywhere else. The attacks have been going on for months, with nothing of substance being done or said until now.
The real concern is to ensure that the highly lucrative flow of education tuition payments into the country continues. International students are ruthlessly exploited, having to pay tens of thousands of dollars in tuition fees while being denied basic rights afforded to Australian students, such as concession fares on public transport.
Education is now worth more than $12 billion annually and ranks as Australia’s third largest export, ahead of tourism and just behind coal and iron ore. Nearly 100,000 Indian youth are studying in Australia, second in number only to those from China.
That's why Trade Minister Simon Crean has held discussions with his Indian counterpart Anand Sharma admitting his fear that recent violence threatened to undermine Australia’s education sector. “It’s not just the quality of the product, it’s the safe environment in which we bring people,” he declared.
Reactionary forces in Australia are exploiting the attacks on Indian students to advance their own agenda. Victorian Liberal leader Ted Baillieu has launched a “law and order” campaign, demanding that the government bolster police numbers and enhance their powers.
Such measures, which the state Labour government of Premier John Brumby will likely implement, will not resolve the situation confronting Indian students and will only result in even worse police harassment and violence against working class youth.
Indian students are left vulnerable because of their precarious situation. Many are unable to live anywhere near their university, due to low incomes and high inner-city accommodation costs, and are forced to travel from the more affordable outer suburbs.
To support themselves, students are typically compelled to combine full time study with long hours of paid employment as convenience store workers, taxi drivers, and other low-paid shift work. This often involves taking public transport late at night.
Most of the perpetrators of the violence against the students are reportedly young people from Melbourne’s working class western suburbs. Many parts of this region have been devastated over the last two decades by mass job losses due to manufacturing plant closures. Tens of thousands of secure and full time jobs have gone, along with apprenticeships, replaced with little more than a few dwindling opportunities for young people in low paid and typically casual sectors such as retail.
Deindustrialisation and permanently high unemployment has inevitably been accompanied by a slew of social problems, including alcohol and drug abuse. Many of those who have recently targeted Indian students were reportedly drug users looking to fund their addiction.
Intersecting with all this is a toxic political atmosphere in which the major parties have all promoted various forms of national chauvinism, invariably involving an undercurrent of White Australia racism. The Rudd Labour government, for example, has recently slashed the immigration intake in response to the economic crisis, thereby implying that lost jobs in Australia are the fault of too many “foreigners”.
At the same time, both politicians and the media have embarked on a new scare campaign over “illegal” refugees. It is no surprise, moreover, that international students have been targeted given that they have long been the victims of systematic and institutionalised discrimination in the tertiary education system. Moves are already underfoot to pre-empt any discussion of these issues.
In the final analysis the attacks on Indian students reveal the tense and violent state of social relations in contemporary capitalist Australia.
Indian students have long complained of police not taking their complaints of racist attacks seriously. Reports have emerged of officers refusing to formally lodge reports of criminal incidents; one student was told to simply move to another suburb to avoid further trouble.
Surprisingly, a few days ago deputy police commissioner Kieran Walshe’s absurdly claimed that there was no evidence that recent assaults and robberies were racially motivated.
In reality, the political establishment has nothing but contempt for the well-being of ordinary students, whether they are from India, Australia, or anywhere else. The attacks have been going on for months, with nothing of substance being done or said until now.
The real concern is to ensure that the highly lucrative flow of education tuition payments into the country continues. International students are ruthlessly exploited, having to pay tens of thousands of dollars in tuition fees while being denied basic rights afforded to Australian students, such as concession fares on public transport.
Education is now worth more than $12 billion annually and ranks as Australia’s third largest export, ahead of tourism and just behind coal and iron ore. Nearly 100,000 Indian youth are studying in Australia, second in number only to those from China.
That's why Trade Minister Simon Crean has held discussions with his Indian counterpart Anand Sharma admitting his fear that recent violence threatened to undermine Australia’s education sector. “It’s not just the quality of the product, it’s the safe environment in which we bring people,” he declared.
Reactionary forces in Australia are exploiting the attacks on Indian students to advance their own agenda. Victorian Liberal leader Ted Baillieu has launched a “law and order” campaign, demanding that the government bolster police numbers and enhance their powers.
Such measures, which the state Labour government of Premier John Brumby will likely implement, will not resolve the situation confronting Indian students and will only result in even worse police harassment and violence against working class youth.
Indian students are left vulnerable because of their precarious situation. Many are unable to live anywhere near their university, due to low incomes and high inner-city accommodation costs, and are forced to travel from the more affordable outer suburbs.
To support themselves, students are typically compelled to combine full time study with long hours of paid employment as convenience store workers, taxi drivers, and other low-paid shift work. This often involves taking public transport late at night.
Most of the perpetrators of the violence against the students are reportedly young people from Melbourne’s working class western suburbs. Many parts of this region have been devastated over the last two decades by mass job losses due to manufacturing plant closures. Tens of thousands of secure and full time jobs have gone, along with apprenticeships, replaced with little more than a few dwindling opportunities for young people in low paid and typically casual sectors such as retail.
Deindustrialisation and permanently high unemployment has inevitably been accompanied by a slew of social problems, including alcohol and drug abuse. Many of those who have recently targeted Indian students were reportedly drug users looking to fund their addiction.
Intersecting with all this is a toxic political atmosphere in which the major parties have all promoted various forms of national chauvinism, invariably involving an undercurrent of White Australia racism. The Rudd Labour government, for example, has recently slashed the immigration intake in response to the economic crisis, thereby implying that lost jobs in Australia are the fault of too many “foreigners”.
At the same time, both politicians and the media have embarked on a new scare campaign over “illegal” refugees. It is no surprise, moreover, that international students have been targeted given that they have long been the victims of systematic and institutionalised discrimination in the tertiary education system. Moves are already underfoot to pre-empt any discussion of these issues.
In the final analysis the attacks on Indian students reveal the tense and violent state of social relations in contemporary capitalist Australia.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Yechury Admits Leadership's Failure
Sitaram Yechury's interview to Karan Thapar for the programme Devil’s Advocate
Karan Thapar: Prakash Karat has accepted that the election results are a major setback, but the truth is actually much worse than that. Can you deny that this is the worst electoral performance in your party's 45-year-history?
Sitaram Yechury: Not at all. I don’t deny it. This is the worst debacle we have had. Soon after we were formed in 64, the first election we contested in 1967 we won 19 seats--today we won 16.
Karan Thapar: So you have literally gone back below your starting point.
Sitaram Yechury: And this is a serious matter. It is a matter which the politburo has admitted is a very big debacle and we have to understand why this happened and seriously introspect.
Karan Thapar: Let’s for a moment pause over the statistics of your performance. You have gone from your best ever electoral performance to your worst ever in just five straight years. This time around you have lost 63 per cent of the seats you had, or to put it differently you have lost 68 percent more seats than you have won. Those statistics are worrying and actually they are appalling.
Sitaram Yechury: Statistics are statistics and you can always manipulate them but that is not the point. The fact is that you cannot escape from this reality that this has been a very big debacle for us. It’s been the worst performance electorally by the party.
Karan Thapar: Let’s then come to why you did so badly. To begin with, can you accept that breaking with the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) was a mistake? The voters didn't understand why you did it and worst of all it made CPI-M look like a party which was promoting instability.
Sitaram Yechury: All these issues we have decided will be discussed--both national and state-level issues—introspected upon and a very serious, honest, self-critical review will be made by us.
Karan Thapar: Let me quote to you what your defeated MPs are saying. Prashant Pradhan, your defeated MP from Kontai, says: "People have not taken kindly to the withdrawal of support from the UPA government. The poor and the farmers never understood why we wanted to topple the government."
Sitaram Yechury: You see these are points of views which have come across. As I said all issues will be discussed by us and on all of them we will come to some honest, self-critical conclusion.
Karan Thapar: Let me quote to you Amitabh Nandi, a defeated MP from Dumdum. He says: "From day one of withdrawing support from UPA our slogans, our activities have proved we are against stability."
Sitaram Yechury: These are opinions that have come and as I said all these issues will be discussed thoroughly and that process has already begun. By the middle of June I think we will come to our conclusion.
Karan Thapar: But can you accept that these are very valid opinions?
Sitaram Yechury: These issues will be discussed, definitely.
Karan Thapar: These are not inexperienced, foolish people talking. These are some of your most senior, cherished MPs, now defeated. They know what they are talking about.
Sitaram Yechury: They have been our leaders in Parliament. There is no way we are going to discount anything anybody says within the party. Everything will be taken seriously and discussed.
Karan Thapar: Now the second problem with breaking with the UPA was that you forced the Congress into the arms of the Trinamool Congress, thus creating a coalition that was able to attract the anti-Left votes in West Bengal at a time when you were yourself suffering from Nandigram, Singur and beginning to realise that the Muslim population could be disaffected. Rather than divide your opponents you ended up uniting and strengthening them.
Sitaram Yechury: But remember that the Congress and the Trinamool always had a ground-level understanding even without an alliance. What happened this time was that the de facto converted itself into de jure.
Karan Thapar: Which was a disaster for you...
Sitaram Yechury: This had its impact, definitely. There’s no doubt about it. We anticipated that this would have an impact on the marginal seats, but there are other reasons why this defeat has occurred in Bengal and those have to be seriously examined.
Karan Thapar: Absolutely. No one denies there are other reasons in Bengal. But given those other reasons, the worst tactic for you was to unite your opponents on a single platform. You should have divided them, not united them.
Sitaram Yechury: Like I said we will review all of this.
Karan Thapar: But can you accept this was bad tactics?
Sitaram Yechury: Not just this, all other questions will be discussed and reviewed. All that I can say right now is that on any one of these issues we have not come to any conclusive decision.
Karan Thapar: But you accept that given that you already had problems in Bengal, devising a strategy that unites your opponents was a pretty silly thing to do?
Sitaram Yechury: But it could well be that our opponents were going to unite any way?
Karan Thapar: Maybe but you prodded them into it. If you hadn’t broken with Congress they might not have gone with Trinamool and then you would have faced a divided opposition not a united one.
Sitaram Yechury: In the last elections, remember, of the 61 Left MPs 54 came to the Lok Sabha defeating Congress candidates. So going into elections with the Congress was never the issue.
Karan Thapar: But the problem was that this time, by breaking with the UPA, you pushed the Congress into the arms of the TMC and thus created a platform of unity against you which otherwise would have been two divided parties.
Sitaram Yechury: That is the reason why I am saying that what was de facto has become de jure.
Karan Thapar: And that was a disaster...
Sitaram Yechury: We will review that...
Karan Thapar: Is it true that Jyoti Basu advised the CPI-M leadership not to break with the UPA?
Sitaram Yechury: He may have had his opinions within the committees but there is no advice that has come to us.
Karan Thapar: What opinion did he express in the committees?
Sitaram Yechury: That I can't tell you. That is something which even he won't tell you.
Karan Thapar: Can I infer that within the committees he expressed a measure of dissent about breaking with the UPA?
Sitaram Yechury: You see breaking from the UPA was not a one-time decision or which happened one-off. It was a series of developments which were taking place as a result of which it culminated in our withdrawing support. On various steps in this process he had some issues to tell us which he told.
Karan Thapar: So there were various moments when he expressed his opinion; there were issues he had to speak about which he did speak about.
Sitaram Yechury: Yes, definitely. Inside the party all of us will give our opinion but once we collectively decide that is our party matter.
Karan Thapar: Thank you, I think you have said it all. You can't confirm it but within the party at various stages he had opinions to express and he did express them.
Sitaram Yechury: He conveyed what he felt at a number of times.
Karan Thapar: He conveyed what he felt at a number of times, not (just) once or twice.
Sitaram Yechury: Even today he does.
Karan Thapar: The second biggest mistake was in fact the Third Front. We all knew what it didn't stand for--it was anti-Congress, anti-BJP—but no one actually knew what it stood for. As a result of which it lacked credibility and it projected negativity.
Sitaram Yechury: We in the politburo have come to the conclusion that the Third Front …. you understand how this Third Front emerged? It was state-level alliances in various states. Now this was brought together as a national alternative, which people obviously found had neither credibility or viability. Both were lacking. Thus the result. That is what we have accepted.
Karan Thapar: Finish the sentence you half began before you interrupted yourself: “We in the Politburo have to come a conclusion about the Third Front” and then you stopped. What is that conclusion?
Sitaram Yechury: That it was neither viable nor credible...
Karan Thapar: Would you therefore say that it was a mistake?
Sitaram Yechury: The way it was projected was a mistake. I’ll tell you why. The CPI-M always had this opinion, which we still continue to have, that India requires a third political alternative. This third political alternative will have to bring about a shift in the policy trajectory in the country. But that cannot be a cut-and-paste job on the eve of elections.
Karan Thapar: This was a hastily put together cut-and-paste job?
Sitaram Yechury: A cut-and-paste job, and to achieve our objective of a third alternative there are no short cuts. It will have to be done through sustained, prolonged, popular struggles. .
Karan Thapar: This was an attempt at putting together a Third Front, not just by cut and paste but by short-cut methods and that was a mistake.
Sitaram Yechury: Yes. That is something which will be a subject of our review in the central committee (of the CPI-M).
Karan Thapar: But in fact it was not just the projection of the Third Front, it was not just the haste and the cut-and-paste manner in which it was put together. Even the composition of the Third Front was wrong. To begin with, almost all its members were former BJP allies. Two of them, Jayalalithaa and Mayawati, face serious charges of corruption. As a result of its composition this front undermined your cherished principles of probity and secularism. These people should have never been your allies.
Sitaram Yechury: That is why in retrospect we are saying that people didn't find it credible. They did not find this front credible.
Karan Thapar: No doubt the people did not find it credible. The election results prove that. But can you accept that at a prior stage you chose the wrong allies? You should not have approached people like Jayalalithaa, like Mayawati.
Sitaram Yechury: In the states we had electoral understandings—with Jayalalithaa it was an understanding in Tamil Nadu; with the TDP it was an understanding in Andhra Pradesh. But we brought all this together as a national alternative. That did not find credibility with the people.
Karan Thapar: You’re accepting that projecting a state level understanding into a national understanding was a mistake. But even at the state level it was a mistake. Just look at the speed with which Jayalalithaa left you. She left you immediately after the elections and before the counting. The TRS left you after the voting and before the counting. As soon as the counting was over the JD-S and the BSP left you. They showed no loyalty to you at the state or national level.
Sitaram Yechury: The AIADMK has not left us formally, but you are right about the BSP, JD-S and TRS. That is precisely the point I am making--the front was neither credible nor viable. This (election result) has only confirmed that.
Karan Thapar: One other thing. At a time when the country was yearning for a strong and stable government, no one believed that the Third Front could offer it and more importantly the prospect of Mayawati as Prime Minister put a lot of people off, maybe even frightened them.
Sitaram Yechury: I don't think it was only a question of stability that people wanted. If it was stability then they would have found little to choose between the UPA and the NDA. They wanted stability with a commitment to the secular, democratic foundations of India. This was the combination which they found the Third Front lacked the credibility to give. And Commitment to secular, democratic foundations the NDA would never give. Hence the result.
Karan Thapar: The reason you lacked credibility in terms of secular foundations of India is not just because of the composition of the Third Front. But if you look at what your party did in Kerala your alliance with (PDP leader) A N Madhani was another mistake.
Sitaram Yechury: There was no alliance with Madhani.
Karan Thapar: Your own local partymen in Kerala have called it an alliance and say it is a mistake.
Sitaram Yechury: In Kerala, not only Madhani, various other issues that have impacted on these elections, all of them will be reviewed.
Karan Thapar: Let us briefly talk about the manner in which your two bastions--of West Bengal and Kerala--undermined your performance. To begin with, how did you permit yourself to go into an election when your entire Kerala unit was not just feuding but acrimoniously tearing itself apart?
Sitaram Yechury: But remember in Kerala this sort of situation prevailed in the 2006 elections and that time there were street-level demonstrations (as well).
Karan Thapar: Except that the situation had got much worse. On the eve of elections your state secretariat wanted V S Achutanandan removed as Chief Minister.
Sitaram Yechury: No, that was not true. That was only a media-created rumour. But the point is in 2006 what was seen as acrimony between our leaders resulted in a two-third majority victory in the Assembly.
Karan Thapar: Except that by 2009 you were no longer the beneficiary of doubts in the minds of the people. They were convinced by then 3 years of feuding meant that you were tearing yourself apart and you were allying with people like Madani. You were losing credibility.
Sitaram Yechury: Remember the elections in 2009 were for the Central government not state government. In Kerala and Bengal people are very conscious, they know what choices they want and whom they want where (i.e. at the Centre).
Karan Thapar: All right let me quote to you Hanan Mollah, one of your defeated MPs. This is what he told several papers: "We have been severely punished. Did we lose touch with ground reality?" What is your answer to that question?
Sitaram Yechury: That is precisely what we are examining. That is the answer we will give in our Central Committee when we meet in June.
Karan Thapar: What is your hunch? You are a political man, no doubt a definitive answer will come after the analysis but what is your instinct?
Sitaram Yechury: Obviously we have lost touch otherwise this sort of result would not have come. But to what degree, why we lost touch, what were the inadequacies, that is something we are seriously examining.
Karan Thapar: But you agree that you lost touch?
Sitaram Yechury: Of course, the results show that.
Karan Thapar: Now let’s come to the question: where does responsibility lie. I want to quote to you what one of your defeated candidates, Amitabh Nandy, has said. He says: "When we complete our introspection it will certainly emerge that the party's top leadership has failed." Would you agree?
Sitaram Yechury: Please understand one thing that this has been a very big debacle for us. Also understand the fact that this is for the first time in the last two decades that a secular government is being formed in India in which the CPI-M has no role. This is a big setback. People, therefore, are expressing their disappointment. All these sentiments
will be taken into account by us.
Karan Thapar: When you say this is the first time a secular government is being formed in India for two decades without any role or presence of CPI-M, you are underlining how irrelevant or marginalised you have become. So let us come back to Amitabh Nandy. Will you accept that the party's top leadership has failed?
Sitaram Yechury: That is what we are examining. Of course the top leadership of the party will have to take the leaderships role, I mean play the leaderships role. That it will.
Karan Thapar: Will the question when you do your examination be raised:has the leadership failed? Will that question be raised?
Sitaram Yechury: Of course it will come. Of course it will be discussed. Remember a Communist party functions by what we call the Leninist principles of organisation, where it is collective functioning with individual responsibility.
Karan Thapar: Both the collective functioning of the leadership will be inquired into as well as the issue of individual responsibility?
Sitaram Yechury: Of course. Yes. All of this will come in to the review. Definitely.
Karan Thapar: Your allies have absolutely no compunction at all in pointing the finger of blame straight at the Delhi leadership of CPI-M. Debabrata Biswas has done it, Abani Roy has done it and now increasingly AB Bardhan is doing it. They say the CPI-M leadership was arrogant and it had lost touch with the masses.
Sitaram Yechury: We have also heard these comments but all of them were party to all the decisions that were taken together in the Left parties' meeting.
Karan Thapar: No doubt but is there any truth in their claim that your leadership was arrogant?
Sitaram Yechury: If our allies are saying all this we will definitely take that into account in our review. Definitely.
Karan Thapar: You won’t turn a deaf ear?
Sitaram Yechury: No, definitely not.
Karan Thapar: You won't sweep it under the carpet?
Sitaram Yechury: No, it is for our own survival to get back the people who have been alienated from us and to advance further that we have to be candid, honest and rigorously honest in this self-critical examination.
Karan Thapar: If you want to be candid and rigorously honest then I put this to you: after facing a similar disastrous electoral performance, LK Advani offered his resignation to the BJP as Leader of Opposition. Why in similar circumstances in the CPI-M has Prakash Karat not found fit to make a similar gesture?
Sitaram Yechury: Leader of Opposition is a position in Parliament and that Parliament has ceased - the 14th Lok Sabha. And that Parliament has ceased to be. So whether he resigns or not that Parliament has finished.
Karan Thapar: We are talking about the need for candidness, for transparency and for winning back the people you have lost. Surely therefore Prakash Karat must make the gesture of accepting responsibility as General Secretary.
Sitaram Yechury: The point again here is that it will have to be a collective assessment that we will make of these results, of why these results have resulted in this sort of manner. And remember, resignation also can be escape from responsibilities.
Karan Thapar: You said a very interesting thing. A collective assessment will be made.
Sitaram Yechury: Yes.
Karan Thapar: Now your Central Committee is due to meet in June. At that meeting what are the chances that Prakash Karat will either step down voluntarily or be stripped of his responsibilities.
Sitaram Yechury: Again let me tell you the Central Committee is going to discuss the reasons for our debacle.
Karan Thapar: And they are going into the question of leadership?
Sitaram Yechury: Leadership of course. In that process. But it will not be on the basis of who is going to resign or not--that is not the issue. The issue is what are the mistakes, why were they committed and how can they be corrected.
Karan Thapar: But can you rule out the possibility of Prakash Karat accepting responsibility at that stage and resigning?
Sitaram Yechury: The Central Committee, as I said, will comprehensively review. Beyond that I cannot go today.
Karan Thapar: Let me put this to you. There is no doubt that the two issues on which you ended up losing seats were the break with the UPA and creation of a less than credible Third Front. Of both those Prakash Karat was the central architect. Is it not therefore the case that, as the Press is saying, he has the greatest measure of direct responsibility for this defeat?
Sitaram Yechury: Prakash Karat is the General Secretary of the CPI-M. These were the decisions of the CPI-M and he as General Secretary will articulate these decisions, naturally.
Karan Thapar: In most organisations when things go wrong the man at the top takes the responsibility.
Sitaram Yechury: But I think that is also one way of escaping responsibility.
Karan Thapar: Are you going to hold him to the job to punish him rather than let him go?
Sitaram Yechury: It is not a question of an individual. As I said, we will collectively assess what are our mistakes.
Karan Thapar: And therefore if you are going to collectively assess his future depends on the outcome and decisions of the central committee.
Sitaram Yechury: Well, the future of the party depends on it.
Karan Thapar: Prakash Karat has accepted that the election results are a major setback, but the truth is actually much worse than that. Can you deny that this is the worst electoral performance in your party's 45-year-history?
Sitaram Yechury: Not at all. I don’t deny it. This is the worst debacle we have had. Soon after we were formed in 64, the first election we contested in 1967 we won 19 seats--today we won 16.
Karan Thapar: So you have literally gone back below your starting point.
Sitaram Yechury: And this is a serious matter. It is a matter which the politburo has admitted is a very big debacle and we have to understand why this happened and seriously introspect.
Karan Thapar: Let’s for a moment pause over the statistics of your performance. You have gone from your best ever electoral performance to your worst ever in just five straight years. This time around you have lost 63 per cent of the seats you had, or to put it differently you have lost 68 percent more seats than you have won. Those statistics are worrying and actually they are appalling.
Sitaram Yechury: Statistics are statistics and you can always manipulate them but that is not the point. The fact is that you cannot escape from this reality that this has been a very big debacle for us. It’s been the worst performance electorally by the party.
Karan Thapar: Let’s then come to why you did so badly. To begin with, can you accept that breaking with the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) was a mistake? The voters didn't understand why you did it and worst of all it made CPI-M look like a party which was promoting instability.
Sitaram Yechury: All these issues we have decided will be discussed--both national and state-level issues—introspected upon and a very serious, honest, self-critical review will be made by us.
Karan Thapar: Let me quote to you what your defeated MPs are saying. Prashant Pradhan, your defeated MP from Kontai, says: "People have not taken kindly to the withdrawal of support from the UPA government. The poor and the farmers never understood why we wanted to topple the government."
Sitaram Yechury: You see these are points of views which have come across. As I said all issues will be discussed by us and on all of them we will come to some honest, self-critical conclusion.
Karan Thapar: Let me quote to you Amitabh Nandi, a defeated MP from Dumdum. He says: "From day one of withdrawing support from UPA our slogans, our activities have proved we are against stability."
Sitaram Yechury: These are opinions that have come and as I said all these issues will be discussed thoroughly and that process has already begun. By the middle of June I think we will come to our conclusion.
Karan Thapar: But can you accept that these are very valid opinions?
Sitaram Yechury: These issues will be discussed, definitely.
Karan Thapar: These are not inexperienced, foolish people talking. These are some of your most senior, cherished MPs, now defeated. They know what they are talking about.
Sitaram Yechury: They have been our leaders in Parliament. There is no way we are going to discount anything anybody says within the party. Everything will be taken seriously and discussed.
Karan Thapar: Now the second problem with breaking with the UPA was that you forced the Congress into the arms of the Trinamool Congress, thus creating a coalition that was able to attract the anti-Left votes in West Bengal at a time when you were yourself suffering from Nandigram, Singur and beginning to realise that the Muslim population could be disaffected. Rather than divide your opponents you ended up uniting and strengthening them.
Sitaram Yechury: But remember that the Congress and the Trinamool always had a ground-level understanding even without an alliance. What happened this time was that the de facto converted itself into de jure.
Karan Thapar: Which was a disaster for you...
Sitaram Yechury: This had its impact, definitely. There’s no doubt about it. We anticipated that this would have an impact on the marginal seats, but there are other reasons why this defeat has occurred in Bengal and those have to be seriously examined.
Karan Thapar: Absolutely. No one denies there are other reasons in Bengal. But given those other reasons, the worst tactic for you was to unite your opponents on a single platform. You should have divided them, not united them.
Sitaram Yechury: Like I said we will review all of this.
Karan Thapar: But can you accept this was bad tactics?
Sitaram Yechury: Not just this, all other questions will be discussed and reviewed. All that I can say right now is that on any one of these issues we have not come to any conclusive decision.
Karan Thapar: But you accept that given that you already had problems in Bengal, devising a strategy that unites your opponents was a pretty silly thing to do?
Sitaram Yechury: But it could well be that our opponents were going to unite any way?
Karan Thapar: Maybe but you prodded them into it. If you hadn’t broken with Congress they might not have gone with Trinamool and then you would have faced a divided opposition not a united one.
Sitaram Yechury: In the last elections, remember, of the 61 Left MPs 54 came to the Lok Sabha defeating Congress candidates. So going into elections with the Congress was never the issue.
Karan Thapar: But the problem was that this time, by breaking with the UPA, you pushed the Congress into the arms of the TMC and thus created a platform of unity against you which otherwise would have been two divided parties.
Sitaram Yechury: That is the reason why I am saying that what was de facto has become de jure.
Karan Thapar: And that was a disaster...
Sitaram Yechury: We will review that...
Karan Thapar: Is it true that Jyoti Basu advised the CPI-M leadership not to break with the UPA?
Sitaram Yechury: He may have had his opinions within the committees but there is no advice that has come to us.
Karan Thapar: What opinion did he express in the committees?
Sitaram Yechury: That I can't tell you. That is something which even he won't tell you.
Karan Thapar: Can I infer that within the committees he expressed a measure of dissent about breaking with the UPA?
Sitaram Yechury: You see breaking from the UPA was not a one-time decision or which happened one-off. It was a series of developments which were taking place as a result of which it culminated in our withdrawing support. On various steps in this process he had some issues to tell us which he told.
Karan Thapar: So there were various moments when he expressed his opinion; there were issues he had to speak about which he did speak about.
Sitaram Yechury: Yes, definitely. Inside the party all of us will give our opinion but once we collectively decide that is our party matter.
Karan Thapar: Thank you, I think you have said it all. You can't confirm it but within the party at various stages he had opinions to express and he did express them.
Sitaram Yechury: He conveyed what he felt at a number of times.
Karan Thapar: He conveyed what he felt at a number of times, not (just) once or twice.
Sitaram Yechury: Even today he does.
Karan Thapar: The second biggest mistake was in fact the Third Front. We all knew what it didn't stand for--it was anti-Congress, anti-BJP—but no one actually knew what it stood for. As a result of which it lacked credibility and it projected negativity.
Sitaram Yechury: We in the politburo have come to the conclusion that the Third Front …. you understand how this Third Front emerged? It was state-level alliances in various states. Now this was brought together as a national alternative, which people obviously found had neither credibility or viability. Both were lacking. Thus the result. That is what we have accepted.
Karan Thapar: Finish the sentence you half began before you interrupted yourself: “We in the Politburo have to come a conclusion about the Third Front” and then you stopped. What is that conclusion?
Sitaram Yechury: That it was neither viable nor credible...
Karan Thapar: Would you therefore say that it was a mistake?
Sitaram Yechury: The way it was projected was a mistake. I’ll tell you why. The CPI-M always had this opinion, which we still continue to have, that India requires a third political alternative. This third political alternative will have to bring about a shift in the policy trajectory in the country. But that cannot be a cut-and-paste job on the eve of elections.
Karan Thapar: This was a hastily put together cut-and-paste job?
Sitaram Yechury: A cut-and-paste job, and to achieve our objective of a third alternative there are no short cuts. It will have to be done through sustained, prolonged, popular struggles. .
Karan Thapar: This was an attempt at putting together a Third Front, not just by cut and paste but by short-cut methods and that was a mistake.
Sitaram Yechury: Yes. That is something which will be a subject of our review in the central committee (of the CPI-M).
Karan Thapar: But in fact it was not just the projection of the Third Front, it was not just the haste and the cut-and-paste manner in which it was put together. Even the composition of the Third Front was wrong. To begin with, almost all its members were former BJP allies. Two of them, Jayalalithaa and Mayawati, face serious charges of corruption. As a result of its composition this front undermined your cherished principles of probity and secularism. These people should have never been your allies.
Sitaram Yechury: That is why in retrospect we are saying that people didn't find it credible. They did not find this front credible.
Karan Thapar: No doubt the people did not find it credible. The election results prove that. But can you accept that at a prior stage you chose the wrong allies? You should not have approached people like Jayalalithaa, like Mayawati.
Sitaram Yechury: In the states we had electoral understandings—with Jayalalithaa it was an understanding in Tamil Nadu; with the TDP it was an understanding in Andhra Pradesh. But we brought all this together as a national alternative. That did not find credibility with the people.
Karan Thapar: You’re accepting that projecting a state level understanding into a national understanding was a mistake. But even at the state level it was a mistake. Just look at the speed with which Jayalalithaa left you. She left you immediately after the elections and before the counting. The TRS left you after the voting and before the counting. As soon as the counting was over the JD-S and the BSP left you. They showed no loyalty to you at the state or national level.
Sitaram Yechury: The AIADMK has not left us formally, but you are right about the BSP, JD-S and TRS. That is precisely the point I am making--the front was neither credible nor viable. This (election result) has only confirmed that.
Karan Thapar: One other thing. At a time when the country was yearning for a strong and stable government, no one believed that the Third Front could offer it and more importantly the prospect of Mayawati as Prime Minister put a lot of people off, maybe even frightened them.
Sitaram Yechury: I don't think it was only a question of stability that people wanted. If it was stability then they would have found little to choose between the UPA and the NDA. They wanted stability with a commitment to the secular, democratic foundations of India. This was the combination which they found the Third Front lacked the credibility to give. And Commitment to secular, democratic foundations the NDA would never give. Hence the result.
Karan Thapar: The reason you lacked credibility in terms of secular foundations of India is not just because of the composition of the Third Front. But if you look at what your party did in Kerala your alliance with (PDP leader) A N Madhani was another mistake.
Sitaram Yechury: There was no alliance with Madhani.
Karan Thapar: Your own local partymen in Kerala have called it an alliance and say it is a mistake.
Sitaram Yechury: In Kerala, not only Madhani, various other issues that have impacted on these elections, all of them will be reviewed.
Karan Thapar: Let us briefly talk about the manner in which your two bastions--of West Bengal and Kerala--undermined your performance. To begin with, how did you permit yourself to go into an election when your entire Kerala unit was not just feuding but acrimoniously tearing itself apart?
Sitaram Yechury: But remember in Kerala this sort of situation prevailed in the 2006 elections and that time there were street-level demonstrations (as well).
Karan Thapar: Except that the situation had got much worse. On the eve of elections your state secretariat wanted V S Achutanandan removed as Chief Minister.
Sitaram Yechury: No, that was not true. That was only a media-created rumour. But the point is in 2006 what was seen as acrimony between our leaders resulted in a two-third majority victory in the Assembly.
Karan Thapar: Except that by 2009 you were no longer the beneficiary of doubts in the minds of the people. They were convinced by then 3 years of feuding meant that you were tearing yourself apart and you were allying with people like Madani. You were losing credibility.
Sitaram Yechury: Remember the elections in 2009 were for the Central government not state government. In Kerala and Bengal people are very conscious, they know what choices they want and whom they want where (i.e. at the Centre).
Karan Thapar: All right let me quote to you Hanan Mollah, one of your defeated MPs. This is what he told several papers: "We have been severely punished. Did we lose touch with ground reality?" What is your answer to that question?
Sitaram Yechury: That is precisely what we are examining. That is the answer we will give in our Central Committee when we meet in June.
Karan Thapar: What is your hunch? You are a political man, no doubt a definitive answer will come after the analysis but what is your instinct?
Sitaram Yechury: Obviously we have lost touch otherwise this sort of result would not have come. But to what degree, why we lost touch, what were the inadequacies, that is something we are seriously examining.
Karan Thapar: But you agree that you lost touch?
Sitaram Yechury: Of course, the results show that.
Karan Thapar: Now let’s come to the question: where does responsibility lie. I want to quote to you what one of your defeated candidates, Amitabh Nandy, has said. He says: "When we complete our introspection it will certainly emerge that the party's top leadership has failed." Would you agree?
Sitaram Yechury: Please understand one thing that this has been a very big debacle for us. Also understand the fact that this is for the first time in the last two decades that a secular government is being formed in India in which the CPI-M has no role. This is a big setback. People, therefore, are expressing their disappointment. All these sentiments
will be taken into account by us.
Karan Thapar: When you say this is the first time a secular government is being formed in India for two decades without any role or presence of CPI-M, you are underlining how irrelevant or marginalised you have become. So let us come back to Amitabh Nandy. Will you accept that the party's top leadership has failed?
Sitaram Yechury: That is what we are examining. Of course the top leadership of the party will have to take the leaderships role, I mean play the leaderships role. That it will.
Karan Thapar: Will the question when you do your examination be raised:has the leadership failed? Will that question be raised?
Sitaram Yechury: Of course it will come. Of course it will be discussed. Remember a Communist party functions by what we call the Leninist principles of organisation, where it is collective functioning with individual responsibility.
Karan Thapar: Both the collective functioning of the leadership will be inquired into as well as the issue of individual responsibility?
Sitaram Yechury: Of course. Yes. All of this will come in to the review. Definitely.
Karan Thapar: Your allies have absolutely no compunction at all in pointing the finger of blame straight at the Delhi leadership of CPI-M. Debabrata Biswas has done it, Abani Roy has done it and now increasingly AB Bardhan is doing it. They say the CPI-M leadership was arrogant and it had lost touch with the masses.
Sitaram Yechury: We have also heard these comments but all of them were party to all the decisions that were taken together in the Left parties' meeting.
Karan Thapar: No doubt but is there any truth in their claim that your leadership was arrogant?
Sitaram Yechury: If our allies are saying all this we will definitely take that into account in our review. Definitely.
Karan Thapar: You won’t turn a deaf ear?
Sitaram Yechury: No, definitely not.
Karan Thapar: You won't sweep it under the carpet?
Sitaram Yechury: No, it is for our own survival to get back the people who have been alienated from us and to advance further that we have to be candid, honest and rigorously honest in this self-critical examination.
Karan Thapar: If you want to be candid and rigorously honest then I put this to you: after facing a similar disastrous electoral performance, LK Advani offered his resignation to the BJP as Leader of Opposition. Why in similar circumstances in the CPI-M has Prakash Karat not found fit to make a similar gesture?
Sitaram Yechury: Leader of Opposition is a position in Parliament and that Parliament has ceased - the 14th Lok Sabha. And that Parliament has ceased to be. So whether he resigns or not that Parliament has finished.
Karan Thapar: We are talking about the need for candidness, for transparency and for winning back the people you have lost. Surely therefore Prakash Karat must make the gesture of accepting responsibility as General Secretary.
Sitaram Yechury: The point again here is that it will have to be a collective assessment that we will make of these results, of why these results have resulted in this sort of manner. And remember, resignation also can be escape from responsibilities.
Karan Thapar: You said a very interesting thing. A collective assessment will be made.
Sitaram Yechury: Yes.
Karan Thapar: Now your Central Committee is due to meet in June. At that meeting what are the chances that Prakash Karat will either step down voluntarily or be stripped of his responsibilities.
Sitaram Yechury: Again let me tell you the Central Committee is going to discuss the reasons for our debacle.
Karan Thapar: And they are going into the question of leadership?
Sitaram Yechury: Leadership of course. In that process. But it will not be on the basis of who is going to resign or not--that is not the issue. The issue is what are the mistakes, why were they committed and how can they be corrected.
Karan Thapar: But can you rule out the possibility of Prakash Karat accepting responsibility at that stage and resigning?
Sitaram Yechury: The Central Committee, as I said, will comprehensively review. Beyond that I cannot go today.
Karan Thapar: Let me put this to you. There is no doubt that the two issues on which you ended up losing seats were the break with the UPA and creation of a less than credible Third Front. Of both those Prakash Karat was the central architect. Is it not therefore the case that, as the Press is saying, he has the greatest measure of direct responsibility for this defeat?
Sitaram Yechury: Prakash Karat is the General Secretary of the CPI-M. These were the decisions of the CPI-M and he as General Secretary will articulate these decisions, naturally.
Karan Thapar: In most organisations when things go wrong the man at the top takes the responsibility.
Sitaram Yechury: But I think that is also one way of escaping responsibility.
Karan Thapar: Are you going to hold him to the job to punish him rather than let him go?
Sitaram Yechury: It is not a question of an individual. As I said, we will collectively assess what are our mistakes.
Karan Thapar: And therefore if you are going to collectively assess his future depends on the outcome and decisions of the central committee.
Sitaram Yechury: Well, the future of the party depends on it.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Coping With Victory And Defeat
By Siddharth Varadarajan
With the poorly conceived Third Front promising little more than political instability and the Bharatiya Janata Party standing for greater social turmoil and division, the victory of the Congress is a vote for calm, centrist stability of the kind the country has not seen for more than two decades.
That voters have attached a premium to both the formation of a stable government and to the pursuit of social-democratic policies should come as no surprise given the spectres of economic hardship, terrorist violence and communal polarisation that haunt our collective psyche today.
The only irony is that the Left and the Congress, whose partnership for four out of the past five years provided the United Progressive Alliance both the aura of stability and the caché of populism, should have ended up such bitter rivals on the eve of the election.
On the eve of the general election, the coming together of major challenges like the world financial crisis, the implosion of Pakistan and the rising tide of religious intolerance within India and the region had shifted the matrix of rational policy in such a manner that the issues on which the Left and the Congress had parted company last year made no sense at all to voters in 2009.
On most issues of consequence, domestic and foreign, the distance between centrist and leftist policy was getting eroded. Having resisted the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme when activists first mooted the idea in 2004, the Congress took it up seriously only after the Left parties made it a priority.
Even then, conservative elements within the ruling establishment like Montek Singh Ahluwalia of the Planning Commission remained sceptical and sought to limit the Central government’s fiscal commitment to it.
Only when the economic slowdown hit India in 2008 — and the importance of NREGA as both a politically convenient safety net for the poor and an accelerator-multiplier to kickstart the economy became apparent — did the Congress make its implementation a priority.
The Congress may have been a late and even reluctant convert; but what matters finally is that the party and the Left ended up on the same page.
On other economic matters which divided the Congress and the Left like financial sector liberalisation, the fact that the Indian banking and insurance sectors were insulated from the global turmoil which felled giants like AIG and Lehman Brothers provided a further basis for the two sides to speak the same broad language.
Instead of celebrating the return of the social-democratic paradigm and using this to leverage a further shift away from neo-liberal dogma, however, the Left found itself holding the can on the one free-market policy its rural support base viscerally opposed: land acquisition.
If nationally, the CPI(M) and its allies were pilloried for a leftism that was largely declaratory, the Left Front paid the price in its bastion of West Bengal for the “rightism” of its policies that allowed Mamata Banerjee to emerge as a defender of the peasantry’s right to till the soil.
Consider the irony: the Left broke with the Congress because it felt the latter had deviated from the Common Minimum Programme of 2004. But in 2009, it allied itself to a diverse set of political parties without any programme other than the desire to establish a “non-Congress, non-BJP” government.
So it was that the Left found itself at election time with allies such as the Telugu Desam Party, the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Biju Janata Dal and the Bahujan Samaj Party — groups that had no interest in pushing the direction of national economic policy one way or the other and which had all, in recent times, been closely associated with the BJP and its communal politics.
This programmatic dilution of the ‘Third Front’ allowed the grouping to look strong on paper but it was devoid of any political ballast. But even this might not have proved fatal except for another factor: As a result of its break with the Congress over an issue that was not so decisive to the direction of Indian foreign policy in the long run — the nuclear deal — the Left facilitated the creation of a coalition that went on to storm the seemingly impregnable red fortress of Bengal.
To be sure, there were and are valid reasons for the CPI(M) to have wanted to build a Third Front. But its failure to articulate a positive pro-people programme around which such a front could be established rendered the exercise electorally and politically futile.
As it looks towards rebuilding itself in Kerala and West Bengal and enlarging its prospects as a genuinely national alternative, the Left will have to be self-critical about its preference for conjuring up expedient top-down coalitions rather than organic, bottom-up alliances based on the kind of struggles and movements the communists know best.
Unless it does so, the parliamentary communist movement will find itself increasingly squeezed by Maoist extremism on the left and the electoral machine of ‘bourgeois’ parties on the right against which it cannot easily compete. If the Left needs to introspect, what of the BJP, which paid the price for believing that the Indian voter would prefer divisiveness and strife to the comforting anchor of centrism?
The rot in the party runs so deep that it cannot be reversed by the resignation of LK Advani. The very fact that its spokesmen thought Narendra Modi’s name would generate a wave in favour of the BJP despite the Supreme Court ordering a probe into his role in the 2002 mass killing of Muslims in Gujarat shows the extent to which they are out of touch with the pulse of the country.
But since the party did relatively better in Gujarat and Karnataka, especially the coastal region where Christians, Muslims and ‘immoral’ Hindus have been targeted by the Sangh Parivar, it is possible the RSS will conclude that religious polarisation is a good electoral strategy for the BJP to pursue. If this is the direction the party takes, its capacity to generate tension and insecurity in civil society will increase even if its national political prospects continue to remain dim.
As for the Congress, the party needs to guard against the hubris that usually accompanies the kind of dramatic, unexpected victory it has just received. The INC defeated the Left fair and square but must realise that its success owes more to the social-democratic elements of its economic policies than to the ‘reforms’ the party’s more affluent backers espouse.
Second, vanquishing the politics the BJP stands for requires more than electoral success. The socio-economic and administrative support structures on which the politics of communalism thrives need to be dismantled through careful, sensitive intervention.
The party must resist the old Congress way of pandering to identity politics as a low-cost way of doing the right thing by India’s diverse electorate. India’s Muslims, for example, want equal opportunities and justice, not the banning of a book or the expulsion of a Taslima Nasreen. Providing these will involve taking on entrenched interests and attitudes, especially in the police and administration, something the
Congress has always shied away from doing.
Finally, the re-election of the UPA must not be seen as a licence to indulge in the ‘Congress culture’ of the past. The public got a glimpse of that culture when some leaders started pushing for Rahul Gandhi to be made Prime Minister as soon as the scale of the party’s victory became apparent.
Sonia Gandhi did well to nip these demands in the bud. If she can go further by pensioning off entrenched interests and democratising the functioning of the party’s leadership, the Congress will be better placed to meet the expectations of those who have voted for it.
Courtesy: The Hindu
With the poorly conceived Third Front promising little more than political instability and the Bharatiya Janata Party standing for greater social turmoil and division, the victory of the Congress is a vote for calm, centrist stability of the kind the country has not seen for more than two decades.
That voters have attached a premium to both the formation of a stable government and to the pursuit of social-democratic policies should come as no surprise given the spectres of economic hardship, terrorist violence and communal polarisation that haunt our collective psyche today.
The only irony is that the Left and the Congress, whose partnership for four out of the past five years provided the United Progressive Alliance both the aura of stability and the caché of populism, should have ended up such bitter rivals on the eve of the election.
On the eve of the general election, the coming together of major challenges like the world financial crisis, the implosion of Pakistan and the rising tide of religious intolerance within India and the region had shifted the matrix of rational policy in such a manner that the issues on which the Left and the Congress had parted company last year made no sense at all to voters in 2009.
On most issues of consequence, domestic and foreign, the distance between centrist and leftist policy was getting eroded. Having resisted the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme when activists first mooted the idea in 2004, the Congress took it up seriously only after the Left parties made it a priority.
Even then, conservative elements within the ruling establishment like Montek Singh Ahluwalia of the Planning Commission remained sceptical and sought to limit the Central government’s fiscal commitment to it.
Only when the economic slowdown hit India in 2008 — and the importance of NREGA as both a politically convenient safety net for the poor and an accelerator-multiplier to kickstart the economy became apparent — did the Congress make its implementation a priority.
The Congress may have been a late and even reluctant convert; but what matters finally is that the party and the Left ended up on the same page.
On other economic matters which divided the Congress and the Left like financial sector liberalisation, the fact that the Indian banking and insurance sectors were insulated from the global turmoil which felled giants like AIG and Lehman Brothers provided a further basis for the two sides to speak the same broad language.
Instead of celebrating the return of the social-democratic paradigm and using this to leverage a further shift away from neo-liberal dogma, however, the Left found itself holding the can on the one free-market policy its rural support base viscerally opposed: land acquisition.
If nationally, the CPI(M) and its allies were pilloried for a leftism that was largely declaratory, the Left Front paid the price in its bastion of West Bengal for the “rightism” of its policies that allowed Mamata Banerjee to emerge as a defender of the peasantry’s right to till the soil.
Consider the irony: the Left broke with the Congress because it felt the latter had deviated from the Common Minimum Programme of 2004. But in 2009, it allied itself to a diverse set of political parties without any programme other than the desire to establish a “non-Congress, non-BJP” government.
So it was that the Left found itself at election time with allies such as the Telugu Desam Party, the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Biju Janata Dal and the Bahujan Samaj Party — groups that had no interest in pushing the direction of national economic policy one way or the other and which had all, in recent times, been closely associated with the BJP and its communal politics.
This programmatic dilution of the ‘Third Front’ allowed the grouping to look strong on paper but it was devoid of any political ballast. But even this might not have proved fatal except for another factor: As a result of its break with the Congress over an issue that was not so decisive to the direction of Indian foreign policy in the long run — the nuclear deal — the Left facilitated the creation of a coalition that went on to storm the seemingly impregnable red fortress of Bengal.
To be sure, there were and are valid reasons for the CPI(M) to have wanted to build a Third Front. But its failure to articulate a positive pro-people programme around which such a front could be established rendered the exercise electorally and politically futile.
As it looks towards rebuilding itself in Kerala and West Bengal and enlarging its prospects as a genuinely national alternative, the Left will have to be self-critical about its preference for conjuring up expedient top-down coalitions rather than organic, bottom-up alliances based on the kind of struggles and movements the communists know best.
Unless it does so, the parliamentary communist movement will find itself increasingly squeezed by Maoist extremism on the left and the electoral machine of ‘bourgeois’ parties on the right against which it cannot easily compete. If the Left needs to introspect, what of the BJP, which paid the price for believing that the Indian voter would prefer divisiveness and strife to the comforting anchor of centrism?
The rot in the party runs so deep that it cannot be reversed by the resignation of LK Advani. The very fact that its spokesmen thought Narendra Modi’s name would generate a wave in favour of the BJP despite the Supreme Court ordering a probe into his role in the 2002 mass killing of Muslims in Gujarat shows the extent to which they are out of touch with the pulse of the country.
But since the party did relatively better in Gujarat and Karnataka, especially the coastal region where Christians, Muslims and ‘immoral’ Hindus have been targeted by the Sangh Parivar, it is possible the RSS will conclude that religious polarisation is a good electoral strategy for the BJP to pursue. If this is the direction the party takes, its capacity to generate tension and insecurity in civil society will increase even if its national political prospects continue to remain dim.
As for the Congress, the party needs to guard against the hubris that usually accompanies the kind of dramatic, unexpected victory it has just received. The INC defeated the Left fair and square but must realise that its success owes more to the social-democratic elements of its economic policies than to the ‘reforms’ the party’s more affluent backers espouse.
Second, vanquishing the politics the BJP stands for requires more than electoral success. The socio-economic and administrative support structures on which the politics of communalism thrives need to be dismantled through careful, sensitive intervention.
The party must resist the old Congress way of pandering to identity politics as a low-cost way of doing the right thing by India’s diverse electorate. India’s Muslims, for example, want equal opportunities and justice, not the banning of a book or the expulsion of a Taslima Nasreen. Providing these will involve taking on entrenched interests and attitudes, especially in the police and administration, something the
Congress has always shied away from doing.
Finally, the re-election of the UPA must not be seen as a licence to indulge in the ‘Congress culture’ of the past. The public got a glimpse of that culture when some leaders started pushing for Rahul Gandhi to be made Prime Minister as soon as the scale of the party’s victory became apparent.
Sonia Gandhi did well to nip these demands in the bud. If she can go further by pensioning off entrenched interests and democratising the functioning of the party’s leadership, the Congress will be better placed to meet the expectations of those who have voted for it.
Courtesy: The Hindu
Monday, May 18, 2009
Money Mantra Makes MPs
By Roger Alexander
With as many as 300 crorepatis — nearly double of 154 in the last Lok Sabha – becoming MPs, the 15th Lok Sabha can no longer be called the House of the People. With 55.25% crorepati members, it is now the House of the Privileged!
If more than half of the MPs are crorepatis, you can be sure that the rest are equally rich for many have benami and hidden assets that are not known. In fact the Election Commission has confirmed that a large number of candidates did not file their PAN details, meaning they do not pay Income Tax. So the number of crorepatis could be much higher.
There have been reports that many of these worthies bought their nominations from the parties they now represent. Indeed, money can't buy you love, but it can buy you power and pelf.
As news reports indicate, these crorepatis spent vast sums to buy votes to get 'elected' to the Lok Sabha. To put it differently, it is akin to buying sex for pleasure. This not only scandalous but disgusting as well and nothing short of the prostitution of Parliament.
And given the class character of the ruling alliance it comes as no
surprise that eight of the 10 richest MPs in the list belong to the Congress and its ally NCP. In all, all 45% of the crorepati MPs belong to Congress (137).
The Opposition benches are also adorned by crorepatis, exposing the class character of India's body politic. 20% of crorepati MPs belong to the BJP (58), a shade less than 5% to the Samajwadi Party (14) and more than 4% to the BSP (13).
These parties are followed by DMK and Shiv Sena. Interestingly, the JD(U) has the seventh biggest group of crorepatis in the new House.
The Rajya Sabha too boasts of similar figures, with half the members in the crorepati bracket.
The wealthiest MP in the new Lok Sabha (sic) is Namma Nageswara Rao of TDP, elected from Khammam in Andhra Pradesh. He is worth Rs 173 crore. Rao is followed by steel baron Naveen Jindal (Congress) from Kurukshetra with assets of Rs 131 crore.
Others at the top of the crorepati club are L Rajagopal (Congress), Praful Patel (NCP), Supriya Sule (NCP), Rajkumari Ratna Singh of Pratapgarh (Congress) and Andhra chief minister YSR Reddy's son YS Rajamohan Reddy.
Amongst states, the most crorepatis are from UP (52), followed by Maharastra (37), Andhra Pradesh (31) and Karnataka (25), Bihar (17), Tamil Nadu (17) and MP (15). Gujarat, at number 10, has sent 12 crorepatis to the new House this time.
All the 7 Congress MPs from Delhi are crorepatis. All the 13 MPs from Punjab are crorepatis. Both winners from Arunachal Pradesh are crorepatis. Three of the four Himachal MPs are crorepatis, and three of five from Uttarakhand are also in the same league.
Even Bengal and Kerala, where the Congress and its allies scored a thumping victory over the Left, elected 10 and 4 crorepatis respectively. And in India's poorest states – Bihar (17/40), Rajasthan (14/25), Orissa (6/21), Jharkhand (5/14), and Chhattisgarh (2/11) – crorepatis virtually 'bought' their way to the Lok Sabha.
Small states and Union Territories that elect only one MP each – Sikkim, Meghalaya, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Daman & Diu, Puducherry, Chandigarh, and Lakshdweep – have the dubious distinction of returning only crorepati candidates, making it a 100% strike rate for the moneybags.
Unlike previous years, the class character of the 15th Lok Sabha now mirrors the Indian state. Only fat-cat capitalists and landlords will control the levers of the state and swagger in the corridors of power for the next five years.
Not surprisingly, it is party-time for the rich, richer, and richest. News reports have revealed just who was partying after the victory of their candidates in the general election. This party was caught on TV cameras at Dalal Street (home of the Bombay Stock Exchange) on Monday, May 18 – the first day of trading after the results were announced.
On 'Memorable Monday' the 30-share Bombay Stock Exchange's benchmark Sensex posted its biggest ever gain of over 2,100 points in just one-minute trade.
Cheering the decisive win of the Congress, 'investors' – who constitute less than 2% of India's population that invests in stocks - became richer by a whopping Rs 6,500,000,000,000 (Rs 6.5 trillion) in just 60 seconds!
Investor wealth, measured in terms of the combined market capitalisation of all the listed companies, increased by over Rs 6,564,770,000,000 crore (Rs 6.56 trillion) in a minute to Rs 44,634,209,700,000 (Rs 44.634 trillion).
If this money was to be distributed among the entire populace – men, women, and children – every Indian would be richer by about Rs 45,000, i.e. six years of income earned through blood, sweat and tears for each of India's 835 million citizens who subsist on Rs 20 per day!
Unfortunately, that's not how capitalism works. The 30 Sensex companies that account for over 47 per cent of the total market capitalisation of all the firms, saw their combined market valuation rise by over Rs 3,160,000,000,000 (Rs 3.16 trillion).
The combined market capitalisation of the 30 blue-chip stocks rose to Rs 21,535,900,900,000 (Rs 21.536 trillion) on Monday, from Rs 183,684,133,000,000 (Rs 183.68 trillion) at the end of trade on May 15 when it was assumed that it would be a hung Parliament.
And who were the biggest gainers? The top five were the Anil Ambani's firms Reliance Communication and Reliance Infrastructure, engineering major Larsen & Toubro, the flagship company of Jaypee Group Jaiprakash Associates and the country's largest private sector lender ICICI Bank.
Other major gainers in the index were Kushal Pal Singh's DLF (16.62%), Anil Agarwal's Sterlite Industries (16.53%), Kumar Mangalam Birla's Hindalco Industries (15.06%), and Sunil Mitta's Bharti Airtel (14.53%). Partially privatised PSUs BHEL and SBI also posted gains.
Indeed, there is an unprecedented sense of jubilation among the super-rich because with the Left losing heavily, all the so-called reforms that all of Manmohan Singh's pet schemes that were scuttled by the Left for five years – disinvestment of all PSUs, especially navaratnas, FDI in retail, opening of the insurance sector to foreign companies, sale of public sector banks, hire-and-fire labour policies, speculative trading in foodgrains and other commodities (in short every sector where easy money is to made selling the family silver) – will now be rolled out with much fanfare in the name of economic reforms to fuel India's 'growth story'.
Market pundits say during the coming week foreign institutional investors will start pumping in fresh funds to avail the golden opportunity to loot India.
The Congress's Left-less victory over the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance has revived hopes of a slew of pro-market policy changes that would take Indian markets to new highs in the coming days. Understandably, the mood is that of "Jai Ho!", as many headlines in the corporate media and blogs suggest.
In the last Lok Sabha, the Left was in a position to force the government to launch pro-poor measures like the NREG, RTI, Forest Rights Act, and farm loan waivers besides increased spending in the social sector and agriculture - ironically measures that paid the Congress handsome dividends in this election - despite resistance from the likes of Manmohan Singh, P Chidambaram and Montek Singh Ahluwalia who complained “there was no money to fund such 'populist' schemes”.
But now that the number of crorepatis in the Lok Sabha has doubled, there are hardly and votaries of the toiling masses who will protest against injustices meted out to the poor and marginalised.
Indeed, because of the Left Front's poor showing, there will hardly be anyone other than the 24 Left MPs who will raise their voice on behalf of the over 77 per cent of the populace, or an estimated 836 million people, who earn an income of Rs 20 per day and over 300 million living below the poverty line.
Since the Left parties now constitute only a droplet in an ocean of crorepatis in Parliament, they have no choice other than taking the people's struggles to the streets and farms in the interest of a just society, not a Crorepati Club.
(This entry has been edited after it was first posted)
Roger And Out
With as many as 300 crorepatis — nearly double of 154 in the last Lok Sabha – becoming MPs, the 15th Lok Sabha can no longer be called the House of the People. With 55.25% crorepati members, it is now the House of the Privileged!
If more than half of the MPs are crorepatis, you can be sure that the rest are equally rich for many have benami and hidden assets that are not known. In fact the Election Commission has confirmed that a large number of candidates did not file their PAN details, meaning they do not pay Income Tax. So the number of crorepatis could be much higher.
There have been reports that many of these worthies bought their nominations from the parties they now represent. Indeed, money can't buy you love, but it can buy you power and pelf.
As news reports indicate, these crorepatis spent vast sums to buy votes to get 'elected' to the Lok Sabha. To put it differently, it is akin to buying sex for pleasure. This not only scandalous but disgusting as well and nothing short of the prostitution of Parliament.
And given the class character of the ruling alliance it comes as no
surprise that eight of the 10 richest MPs in the list belong to the Congress and its ally NCP. In all, all 45% of the crorepati MPs belong to Congress (137).
The Opposition benches are also adorned by crorepatis, exposing the class character of India's body politic. 20% of crorepati MPs belong to the BJP (58), a shade less than 5% to the Samajwadi Party (14) and more than 4% to the BSP (13).
These parties are followed by DMK and Shiv Sena. Interestingly, the JD(U) has the seventh biggest group of crorepatis in the new House.
The Rajya Sabha too boasts of similar figures, with half the members in the crorepati bracket.
The wealthiest MP in the new Lok Sabha (sic) is Namma Nageswara Rao of TDP, elected from Khammam in Andhra Pradesh. He is worth Rs 173 crore. Rao is followed by steel baron Naveen Jindal (Congress) from Kurukshetra with assets of Rs 131 crore.
Others at the top of the crorepati club are L Rajagopal (Congress), Praful Patel (NCP), Supriya Sule (NCP), Rajkumari Ratna Singh of Pratapgarh (Congress) and Andhra chief minister YSR Reddy's son YS Rajamohan Reddy.
Amongst states, the most crorepatis are from UP (52), followed by Maharastra (37), Andhra Pradesh (31) and Karnataka (25), Bihar (17), Tamil Nadu (17) and MP (15). Gujarat, at number 10, has sent 12 crorepatis to the new House this time.
All the 7 Congress MPs from Delhi are crorepatis. All the 13 MPs from Punjab are crorepatis. Both winners from Arunachal Pradesh are crorepatis. Three of the four Himachal MPs are crorepatis, and three of five from Uttarakhand are also in the same league.
Even Bengal and Kerala, where the Congress and its allies scored a thumping victory over the Left, elected 10 and 4 crorepatis respectively. And in India's poorest states – Bihar (17/40), Rajasthan (14/25), Orissa (6/21), Jharkhand (5/14), and Chhattisgarh (2/11) – crorepatis virtually 'bought' their way to the Lok Sabha.
Small states and Union Territories that elect only one MP each – Sikkim, Meghalaya, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Daman & Diu, Puducherry, Chandigarh, and Lakshdweep – have the dubious distinction of returning only crorepati candidates, making it a 100% strike rate for the moneybags.
Unlike previous years, the class character of the 15th Lok Sabha now mirrors the Indian state. Only fat-cat capitalists and landlords will control the levers of the state and swagger in the corridors of power for the next five years.
Not surprisingly, it is party-time for the rich, richer, and richest. News reports have revealed just who was partying after the victory of their candidates in the general election. This party was caught on TV cameras at Dalal Street (home of the Bombay Stock Exchange) on Monday, May 18 – the first day of trading after the results were announced.
On 'Memorable Monday' the 30-share Bombay Stock Exchange's benchmark Sensex posted its biggest ever gain of over 2,100 points in just one-minute trade.
Cheering the decisive win of the Congress, 'investors' – who constitute less than 2% of India's population that invests in stocks - became richer by a whopping Rs 6,500,000,000,000 (Rs 6.5 trillion) in just 60 seconds!
Investor wealth, measured in terms of the combined market capitalisation of all the listed companies, increased by over Rs 6,564,770,000,000 crore (Rs 6.56 trillion) in a minute to Rs 44,634,209,700,000 (Rs 44.634 trillion).
If this money was to be distributed among the entire populace – men, women, and children – every Indian would be richer by about Rs 45,000, i.e. six years of income earned through blood, sweat and tears for each of India's 835 million citizens who subsist on Rs 20 per day!
Unfortunately, that's not how capitalism works. The 30 Sensex companies that account for over 47 per cent of the total market capitalisation of all the firms, saw their combined market valuation rise by over Rs 3,160,000,000,000 (Rs 3.16 trillion).
The combined market capitalisation of the 30 blue-chip stocks rose to Rs 21,535,900,900,000 (Rs 21.536 trillion) on Monday, from Rs 183,684,133,000,000 (Rs 183.68 trillion) at the end of trade on May 15 when it was assumed that it would be a hung Parliament.
And who were the biggest gainers? The top five were the Anil Ambani's firms Reliance Communication and Reliance Infrastructure, engineering major Larsen & Toubro, the flagship company of Jaypee Group Jaiprakash Associates and the country's largest private sector lender ICICI Bank.
Other major gainers in the index were Kushal Pal Singh's DLF (16.62%), Anil Agarwal's Sterlite Industries (16.53%), Kumar Mangalam Birla's Hindalco Industries (15.06%), and Sunil Mitta's Bharti Airtel (14.53%). Partially privatised PSUs BHEL and SBI also posted gains.
Indeed, there is an unprecedented sense of jubilation among the super-rich because with the Left losing heavily, all the so-called reforms that all of Manmohan Singh's pet schemes that were scuttled by the Left for five years – disinvestment of all PSUs, especially navaratnas, FDI in retail, opening of the insurance sector to foreign companies, sale of public sector banks, hire-and-fire labour policies, speculative trading in foodgrains and other commodities (in short every sector where easy money is to made selling the family silver) – will now be rolled out with much fanfare in the name of economic reforms to fuel India's 'growth story'.
Market pundits say during the coming week foreign institutional investors will start pumping in fresh funds to avail the golden opportunity to loot India.
The Congress's Left-less victory over the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance has revived hopes of a slew of pro-market policy changes that would take Indian markets to new highs in the coming days. Understandably, the mood is that of "Jai Ho!", as many headlines in the corporate media and blogs suggest.
In the last Lok Sabha, the Left was in a position to force the government to launch pro-poor measures like the NREG, RTI, Forest Rights Act, and farm loan waivers besides increased spending in the social sector and agriculture - ironically measures that paid the Congress handsome dividends in this election - despite resistance from the likes of Manmohan Singh, P Chidambaram and Montek Singh Ahluwalia who complained “there was no money to fund such 'populist' schemes”.
But now that the number of crorepatis in the Lok Sabha has doubled, there are hardly and votaries of the toiling masses who will protest against injustices meted out to the poor and marginalised.
Indeed, because of the Left Front's poor showing, there will hardly be anyone other than the 24 Left MPs who will raise their voice on behalf of the over 77 per cent of the populace, or an estimated 836 million people, who earn an income of Rs 20 per day and over 300 million living below the poverty line.
Since the Left parties now constitute only a droplet in an ocean of crorepatis in Parliament, they have no choice other than taking the people's struggles to the streets and farms in the interest of a just society, not a Crorepati Club.
(This entry has been edited after it was first posted)
Roger And Out
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
